Analysis: Few options left for Hamas

Displaced Palestinian Meyaser Omar Al Attar, 13, with her 18-month-old brother Mahmoud on Wednesday at a U.N. school in Gaza City where the family had sought refuge during the conflict.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hamas has entered Egyptian-brokered talks with Israel on a new border regime for blockaded Gaza from a point of military weakness: It lost hundreds of fighters, two-thirds of its 10,000 rockets and all of its attack tunnels, worth $100 million, Israel says.

The Gaza conflict has boosted the Islamic militant group’s popularity among Palestinians because it confronted Israel. But the mood can quickly turn if Hamas fails to deliver achievements for Gaza in the Cairo talks, most urgently opening the territory’s borders.

An Israeli army officer giving journalists a tour late last month of a tunnel at the Israel-Gaza border that allegedly was used by Palestinian militants for attacks.

If the Cairo talks fail, Hamas will have only limited options, since resuming rocket fire would probably bring more ruination on an already-devastated territory. In the past month of Israel-Hamas fighting — the third major round of such hostilities in five years — nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed, more than 9,000 wounded and thousands of homes destroyed.

Israel wants Hamas to disarm, or at least ensure it cannot re-arm, before considering the group’s demand that the territory’s borders be opened. Israel and Egypt imposed a closure after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, although Egypt allows individuals to cross intermittently.

“The two sides have reviewed what they consider issues of concern,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said, describing the matter as “complicated and not easy.”

Hazem Abu Shanab, a member of Fatah, one of the main factions involved in the talks, said disarmament would require Israel to pull out from occupied Palestinian territory.

“As long as there is occupation, there will be resistance and there will be weapons,” he said. “The armament is linked to the occupation.”

Egyptian mediators have been shuttling between the delegations.

In Jerusalem on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s intense bombardment of Gaza, saying that despite the high civilian death toll, it was a “justified” and “proportionate” response to Hamas attacks.

Speaking to international journalists, Netanyahu presented video footage he said showed militants firing rockets from areas near schools and Hamas deploying civilians as human shields.

“Our enemy is Hamas, our enemies are the other terrorist organizations trying to kill our people and we have taken extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties,” he said.

Bassam Salhi, a Palestinian delegate, said he hoped the cease-fire set to expire Friday morning would be extended, and an Egyptian security official said Cairo was pressing Israel for an extension.

There has been no official Israeli response, though an official at Netanyahu’s office said Israel has “no problem” with “unconditional extensions of the cease-fire.”

But Salhi said the most important thing to Palestinians is removing the blockade and starting to reconstruct Gaza.

“There can be no deal without that,” Salhi said.

Entire blocks ruined

The massive destruction in Gaza City’s neighborhood of Shijaiyah, close to the border with Israel, illustrated the extent of Hamas’ military setbacks and the fickle public mood it faces.

Entire city blocks have been laid to waste in Shijaiyah in one of the fiercest battles of the war that pitted hundreds of Hamas gunmen against Israeli troops after the start of the Israeli ground operation July 17.

At least five of more than 30 cross-border military tunnels destroyed by Israel during the war had originated in Shijaiyah, and Hamas fought hard to protect the strategic assets, said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman

“We paid a heavy price,” said the English teacher. At the least, he said, “we hope now to open the borders.”

However, Hamas can only meet such expectations by Gaza’s 1.8 million people if it agrees to hand over some power to its longtime rival, Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas had seized 139-square-mile Gaza from Abbas in 2007, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose tight border restrictions. In any new deal negotiated in Cairo, Israel and Egypt would only agree to open the borders if forces loyal to Abbas took up positions at the Gaza crossings.

For years, Hamas had managed to survive the closure with the help of smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border.

The tunnels were tolerated by Egypt as a way of easing the plight of Gazans without formally opening the frontier.

But with the ouster of a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo last year, Hamas’ prospects worsened dramatically. The Egyptian military, considering Hamas a security threat, destroyed the tunnels and deprived Hamas of key revenues from tunnel taxation.